Advocates for refugees and other migrants are some of the loudest voices demanding reform to Canada's immigration and settlement processes before expansion. Directors of settlement and refugee organizations, who may have otherwise endorsed Trudeau's plans, say the system is already overloaded. Newcomers categorized as "highly skilled" have publicly complained about being stuck in a bureaucratic limbo with the immigration ministry and not receiving decisions on their residency permits for years.
Public opinion appears to have shifted as well. Even before Trudeau's plan, anti-immigration sentiment was already worsening online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Banerjee said, as some Canadians blamed immigrants, particularly those of Asian descent, for the spread of the disease. In July, David Coletto, CEO of Canada's Abacus polling firm, wrote on his Substack that 61 percent of Canadians polled believe that 500,000 immigrants per year is too high, including 37 percent who feel it is "way too high." In addition, a July Abacus survey found that four in 10 Canadians polled would vote for a politician who promised to reduce immigration levels.
Now, some Canadians are conflating a different issue with immigration: the housing crisis that Trudeau has been unable to stem in his nearly eight-year tenure. In the many think pieces about immigration, commentators have complained of already overburdened services, from health care wait times to the availability of language lessons. But the most common criticism of Trudeau's plan to expand immigration is the lack of affordable housing.
"Canada doesn't have a refugee problem. Canada has a housing problem," said Francesca Allodi-Ross, who runs Romero House, a nongovernmental organization in Toronto that connects migrants with people who have spare rooms. She worries about newcomers being blamed for a housing shortage that has been a long time coming.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada has the most expensivehousing market in the G-7. Vacancy rates for rental housing are at a two-decade low, and the Royal Bank of Canada expects the country's rental housing gap (the difference between available rental units and those seeking them) to surpass 120,000 by 2026—quadrupling today's deficit. In early August, Stefane Marion, the chief economist of the National Bank, called on the government to revise the immigration target until housing supply could match demand, citing "record imbalance" between the two.
Meanwhile, as housing shortages threaten to affect the coming "highly skilled" migrants prioritized by Trudeau's plan, social justice-oriented groups such as Romero House have pointed out that the government has so far neglected to provide enough housing for other newcomers who have already arrived: specifically, refugees and asylum-seekers. The government's failure to arrange temporary housing for them was glaringly apparent over the summer, when hundreds of asylum-seekers campedoutside Toronto's emergency shelter intake center.
The way the government responds to the needs of newcomers, and especially refugees, is "very reactive—and it's been this way for years," Allodi-Ross said. It was only after the Toronto shelter crisis, when many media commentators questioned Trudeau's immigration expansion program, that the municipal, provincial, and federal government committed $71.4 million to housing for refugees and asylum-seekers, and the city freed up more hotels for emergency shelter.
Directors of temporary shelters and refugee settlement programs say there is a chronic lack of state funding and support for recent arrivals. John Mtshede, the executive director of Matthew House, a shelter for asylum-seekers in Ontario's Niagara region, said his shelter is stretched to capacity. For years, the government has repeatedly denied Matthew House's requests for funding to develop a plot of land for additional housing. Matthew House has found its most sustainable support through private fundraising and religious groups, rather than government funding.
Like many others who work at refugee and immigration NGOs, Mtshede is frustrated with the lack of coordination between the municipal, provincial, and federal governments about who bears responsibility for housing the government's target of a little more than 70,000 new refugees each year. "Nobody wants to take the blame for this situation," he said.
Despite the pushback, the Liberal government appears to be doubling down and ignoring accusations that it has not funded the services required to process and settle newcomers. At a press conference in early August, a reporter asked Marc Miller, the new immigration minister, if the government would reduce the immigration targets.
"Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at," he said. "But certainly, I don't think we're in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination." In the meantime, newcomers will increasingly become the fall guy for the housing crisis that has unfolded under Trudeau's watch.
